2nd Street Transportation Project (Louisville, KY)

Less than one year after the contract was awarded, Light Projects’ illumination and color design for Louisville’s 2nd Street Bridge and Streetscape opened to celebrants on October 13, 2010. Officially named 2nd Street Transportation Project, the landscape architect was Carman and engineers HDR. Our client was Louisville’s Downtown Development Corporation (DDC). DDC and Carman navigated complex approval processes which included federal government agencies, State and City Department of Transportation, and the local Waterfront Development Corporation, among others. The project was funded by the ARRA stimulus program; which called for a fast track and economical design concept and solution.

The streetscape area was a service road combined with adjacent vacant land running along side the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge. The cantilevered truss bridge, locally known as 2nd Street bridge, crosses the Ohio River between Kentucky and Indiana. The bridge is in the National Register of Historic Places.

Cross streets Washington and Witherspoon join 2nd Street. A row of wooden buildings on Washington present their old timey “Whiskey Row” back doors to the street. The buildings of Iron Quarter on Washington are being renovated into hotels, restaurants and bars. When Light Projects arrived a generally disheveled, chipped and neglected sensibility pervaded.

We visited the site and participated in a design charrette in November 2009.The stakeholder workshop set the tone and direction for the design. Bright and welcoming were the keywords for lighting.

Mock-ups were held as the bridge was being painted

Now, the underside of the bridge is enhanced with a floating effect of cast light; outlining and illuminating the I-beam surfaces and textures. The duo-tone color scheme — red and gold — is balanced with the cream color of paint coating. The colors — bridge as canvas and the lighting — are based on a celebration of amber liquid bourbon and colors of sunset.

In-progress photographs during the last night of programming

Light Projects selected energy-saving fluorescent tubes for the bridge lighting – simple, industrial lighting fixtures with a twist; the luminaires were filtered with colored glass and controlled by Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI). DALI is an electronic network protocol that is generally used for lighting in buildings. We adapted it for our exterior use and complex lighting sequences.

Another technological innovation is a series of flasher beacons mounted on the face of the bridge. Whimsical sequences mark sunset and each hour afterward until 2:00 AM on weekends, and midnight during the week. These flashers are famous for lighting up the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Here, a little movie shot during programming that demonstrates the breathing sequence of color.

Traditionally, the city center has been associated with such iconic non-residential structures as Neiman-Marcus’ flagship store, the once- flamboyant Statler-Hilton building and the “Old City Hall” notorious for Jack Ruby’s slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald. DOWNTOWN DALLAS, a business improvement district, has been formed, and buildings heretofore industrial and commercial, such as the moderne-style Mercantile, formerly a bank building with radio transmitter and an illuminated clock tower, have been renovated for housing.

SpectraScape rendering and color palette

I worked closely with the park designer, Thomas Balsley, to develop the park’s lighting scheme so a subsequent public artwork commission was a natural progression which built on my understanding of the uses and types of park visitors. University of North Texas’ law school is slated to move into the Old City Hall and I envisioned students with laptops and law books as primary park visitors.

Inverted “L” shaped green, glass shade-structures were designed by the architect to stand along the edge of Main Street. The structures are set off by a long triangle of seasonally planted, colorful striated gardens. I thought of the structures “study carrels”, envisioning a light that might switch on when students or other visitor entered for reading during warm Texas evenings.

Using the color and stripes of the gardens as a launch point, I envisioned sleek lines of light integrated into the shelters’ edges. Narrow bands of animated stripes, viewed in series will attract passersby.

Light Projects’ Design Manager, Ute Besenecker, has been instrumental throughout the design and implementation process and we have worked closely with interactive designer Ed Purver for programming.

The renovation project includes new street alignments, landscaping, a bike path, public art, street and landscape lighting and most importantly a verdant JFK Park – in a former parking lot.

Robert Lieber (Mayor’s Office), Amanda Burden (Department of City Planning), Helen Marshall (Queen’s Borough President), Adrian Benepe (Department of Parks and Recreation), and Gail Barron (Long Island City Business Improvement District) spoke to the crowd about the work that had gone into making the project a reality. They spoke of improved lighting (three mentions) and pedestrian and traffic-friendly streets and the new landscaping.

Shanghai (上海)

From Suzhou the bullet train to Shanghai took 40 minutes. The view from the taxi window showcased a city festooned in scaffolding. The Shanghainese are preparing to welcome the world – 70 million visitors are expected — for Shanghai 2010 ” Better City, Better Life”, May through October 2010, by repairing facades and generally sprucing up. We sped along and entered a hardware and tool district – and then our hotel, Riverside Bund – just adjacent to the famed Bund (外滩), or Wei Tan District, busy with locals and tourists. The pre-1937 European-influenced Bund architecture is nestled on the banks of the Huang Pu River.

Martin Ma, YGLS

Martin Ma, a principal from Guangzhou Yang Guang Lighting Service Co. Ltd. (YGLS), headquartered in Guangzhou, joined us for the final leg of the journey. YGLS has multiple mandates; management of lighting projects (as owners’ representative), partners with Guangzhou Messe Frankfurt Exhibition (for Guangzhou International Lighting Technology Symposium), and Urban Planning and Design Institute of Tsinghua University (for educational forums). They organize overseas lighting tours to facilitate communication within the lighting industry and have established Yang Guang Lighting Designers Growth Foundation to support young Chinese lighting designers. Finally, YGLS publishes a lighting magazine,Yang Guang.

The first appointment was at the Tongji University Architectural Design and Research Institute. Mr.Zhou Jianfeng, Deputy General Architect and Yixiu Yang, Architect shared architectural projects – buildings and interiors, and I shared works of Light Projects and elaborated on my ideas for creative lighting approaches to infrastructure and public space. I went on a tour of the inventive, adventurous building where my host YGLS holds lighting seminars.

Sophisticated and vernacular Shanghai

After dinner in the center of Shanghai City, complimentsof Rock Hsuing of Roled Opto Electronics, an evening walk took us to visit Xintiandi (新天地) – literally Heaven on Earth, a jammed, fashionable nightlife district composed of adapted, reused and recreated warm-wood and -grey blocks of the Shikumen housing of early Shanghai. Framed within the antique walls and tiles is a highly programmed composition of galleries, bars, cafes and themed restaurants. The complex felt strangely sacrilegious – authentic and inauthentic – hard to put my finger on… and then it turns out…

The principal architect of Xintiandi is, not surprisingly, an American: Benjamin Wood, who once worked for Benjamin Thompson, the designer of Quincy Market. (Wood recently relocated from Boston to Shanghai.) Wood’s design is a clever mixture of renovated old buildings and new construction imitating the style of shikumen, the gray brick town houses that were built in many Shanghai neighborhoods beginning in the eighteensixties. Three-story structures built along narrow alleys, with elaborate, stone-carved entries leading into small interior courtyards, shikumen—the term means “stone gate”— generally housed upper-middle-class families. (Under Communist rule, shikumen were converted to tenements, and as many as seven families were shoehorned into them.) Like many buildings in cosmopolitan Shanghai, a shikumen combines Asian and Western influences; it is a Chinese home with a Parisian sensibility, a hybrid form both delicate and monumental.

The inspiration for the Xintiandi project was a gray brick building, no larger than a house, sitting in the middle of the site; it is where the Chinese Communist Party originally met, in 1921. (Mao himself attended the first meeting.) Vincent Lo, the developer who runs Shui On, was told by government officials that the buildings adjacent to the old meeting place had to be maintained, and that none of the garish commercialism that marks most Chinese retail establishments would be permitted beside it. – Paul Goldberger, New Yorker, “Shanghai Surprise “, 2005

I had the opportunity to visit the Shanghai EDAW office and meet a wide variety of urban designers, landscape designers, architects and planners; introduction compliments of my friend Chris Choa (who is quoted in the New Yorker article if you read it all the way through). James Lu welcomed me and a spirited discussion occurred about new cities in China and issues of public lighting.

Martin suggested to expect a great building for our next meeting at Zhongtai Lighting with Emma Jiang and Claudia Cai. I pictured an interesting building and an office within… as I walked up to the threshold of No. 58 Pan Yu Road preoccupied with the taxi ride through the French Concession and all the traffic, my view was filled with a tall silver and green surface – a living wall. Through the door, an astonishing view upward was framed on left, right and on the ground plane with sleek hanging gardens and water dripping and flowing. It was cool and majestic and I realized that this was not a normal “interesting” office building. And it dawned on me that Zhongtai was the only tenant…

Z58 is multi-functional – a design and events gallery, offices, and food service for those privileged to work and visit, and – amazing – two “6-star” bedrooms for visiting dignitaries. But the area I liked best was a setting of two Eames lounge chairs surrounded by a softly flowing rectilinear pool on the top floor with a view of the garden and Former Residence of Dr. Sun Yat-sen (上海孫中山故居紀念館 上海市) China’s doctor-leader known as the “National Father of modern China”.

Zhongtai calls itself “one of biggest professional lighting companies in China with offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou”.The lighting division is but one of a larger holding company with other divisions in construction and energy industries. It was Zhongtai Lighting that coordinated the work of French designer Roger Narboni in Hangzhou for the Grand Canal lighting master plan and subsequent implementation of his design.

On every trip outside the U.S. my partner and I visit the local bird market. At Shanghai’s Flower, Bird, Fish and Insect Market (花, 鸟, 鱼和昆虫市场) we spent an enchanted hour meeting the birds and their owners, inspecting the ceramic dishes and grains, feeding baby starlings and wondering about the phantasmagoria of crickets…. Here, I have found Mr. Xing-Bao Jin’s– Shanghai Institute of Entomology– invaluable website resource on Chinese Cricket Culture. In the baskets and little cages live the crickets who inspire by song and signal the seasons and seasonal activities (see images above).

Listen to the Cricket
by Bei Ju-Yi, Tang dynasty

The Singing cricket chirps throughout the long night, tolling in the cloudy autumn with its rain. Intent on disturbing the gloomy sleepless soul, the cricket moves towards the bed chirp by chirp. — from Chinese Cricket Culture

Shanghai Pudong International Airport: Terminal 2 designed by Richard Rogers Partnership, opened in 2003

June 18th: after an early morning visit to Gucheng Park (古代公园), Tai Chi and frantic packing – time to return to New York City. Shanghai / New York City the two are completely compatible. Can you love more than one city?

The Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009 (STAA) proposes $99.8 billion for public transportation — a more than 90 percent increase compared with SAFETEA-LU levels. The bill also calls for investing $50 billion in high-speed rail.

The (funding) guidelines institute a July 10 pre-application deadline, which will enable the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to provide feedback on project applications, according to National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP). Final applications for funding Tracks 1, 3 and 4 are due Aug. 24; applications for funding Track 2 are due by Oct. 2.

A/E firms (and sub-consultants who regularly team for public works) should get their Federal Forms SF 330 updated and ready to create design team proposals, as indicated by Ann Looper Pryor’s post on LinkedIn, today, May 7, 2009,

Several major funding sources will start the RFP process in mid-May to fulfill the strict funding deadlines as discussed previously on this blog.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act gives agencies, counties, and municipalities … 90-120 days to obligate funding to “shovel ready” projects. That means that between May 18 and June 19, recipients of the funding will be in a full court press to secure design professionals to take advantage of those funds within the federal Fiscal Year 2009, ending September 30. Another surge in public project inquiries is expected June through September as the Federal Omnibus Budget (supplemental funding for March 6-September 30, 2009) and the 2010 Federal Budget (October 1, 2009-September 30, 2010) kick in for agency capital improvements and a variety of state programs.